The Miracle No One Saw

China and General Electric move forward on coal fired power plant climate change issues, yet the world hears nothing of their shared achievements

A major initiative was agreed between the People’s Republic of China and the U.S.A. on clean coal technologies this year of epoch making proportions. Here is the programme summary on this agreement from the U.S. White House.

Why is there no discussion in the mainstream press of the actual engineering work being done with great mutual trust and determination to sequester power plant carbon emissions into profitable commercial products which make jobs and a better future for all? A perfectly good carbon dioxide molecule is a terrible thing to waste if one can make an honourable profit from it. There is no public discussion on this at all except in the engineering trade journals.
These animations explain clearly how the General Electric coal gasification process works.

While the conflict between Western green eco-fanatics and climate realists over anthropogenic global warming continues to rage to everyone’s detriment, hard-working engineers have built and are building solutions in China which satisfy both sides of the argument.

Clean coal power plants are designed now to capture carbon from power plant emissions which satisfies green priorities, while on the economic “plus” side to satisfy practical climate realists, that carbon is even now being used cost-effectively in China to manufacture fertilizers, plastics, and synthetic fuels (for in-depth descriptions of these very time-tested and proven commercial carbon conversion processes, please see my Website: www.transactionsmagazine.com ).

This clean coal programme for all of China moves forward vigorously and with great resolution toward the goal of total success for all. On April 16th of 2010, an important agreement was signed between the People’s Republic and China and General Electric Company. Under the terms of the agreement signed, USTDA (United States Trade Development Agency) will fund a feasibility study that would support the advancement of commercial scale integrated gasification combined cycle (IGCC) facilities in China based on GE-designed IGCC technology. In this initial study phase, GE and CPECC (China Power Engineering Consulting Group Corporation) will evaluate the cost and performance of an IGCC design.

“Coal is an abundant and low cost resource in China and the U.S. Gasification technology allows us to use it in a much cleaner way,” said Steve Bolze, president & CEO for GE Power & Water. “To achieve significant reductions in carbon dioxide and other emissions, cleaner coal power generation technologies such as IGCC must be part of the solution.”

Gasification technology has become a critical tool in the expansion of the Chinese economy, allowing a wide variety of industrial products and fuels to be created from low-cost, abundant coal resources. GE’s gasification technology is one of the most widely applied technologies of its kind in China, with more than 40 licensed facilities. As gasification projects in China get larger and more complex, advanced technologies such as GE’s new larger scale quench gasifier and higher-pressure gasification technology will be critical to reducing overall project cost.

The United States and China are two of the largest consumers of coal for industrial applications and power generation. There is significant interest in seeing cleaner gasification technologies and IGCC with carbon capture widely deployed in a carbon-constrained environment.

The scale of this effort is astonishing and makes the work building the Pyramids of Egypt look like a child’s sandbox castle-building. Every province in China will be building new plants like these to add to the forty-plus plants already in place and operating. So why is there no presence in the press of this newsworthy information?

First, my contention is that only bad news sells newspapers in the Western press, by cultural and business choice: bad news upsets people which effect in turn makes them impulse buyers who will respond to the advertising in the newspapers. This is marketing psychology at work.

Second, the carbon traders and financial paper shufflers wish to make large amounts of money from exploiting the paradigm of a problem which cannot ever be solved until its extent is properly metricated and measured: there is not even a definition of what constitutes success in controlling “global warming.” There is no evidence 350 ppm of CO2 as the atmospheric component will yield any measurable improvement. Show me the lab trials and tests which prove this, please. If engineers and business alone make headway on this issue by themselves, the paper shuffling money harvesters are out of work.

Third, the green movement does not appear to be about green issues at all. The green movement seems to be rather about new ways to control and manipulate the political system in anti-democratic ways and against the will of the people.

—-Walter James O’Brien
Power plant cost analyst